New York and other major cities’ hotels revealed high on luxury, yet frugal on offering high-speed Internet

“No Wi-Fi?” is just the kind of question that gains a lot of detractors for whomsoever it is directed towards. Safe to assume then that five star hotels would be the last to make it to that Wi-Fi hate list. Correct? If I were you then before agreeing, I’d think again. Especially since now a very eloquent list is doing the rounds of the Internet (ha!), demonstrating with unwavering confidence, it’s the highest priced hotels, the ones that even charge a hefty fee for Wi-Fi that are in fact, offering the slowest speeds. And it’s the budget heroes charging nothing, or next to and offering much faster connections.
While there are already ways to check your own connection’s speed, it was nothing short of genius, we’d say, when a new website Hotelwifitest.com was launched to let hotel guests test the speed of their Internet connection and then save their comments for others’ reference. Naturally, one could also note whether or not they were charged for the Wi-Fi and if yes, then how much. And the answers are such that put several top-notch properties to shame.

In New York, itself, one of the most populous cities and also with the highest number of tested hotels (160), where the extent of net savvy-ness should put Wi-Fi on the pro bono list for luxury hotels, are Wi-Fi frugal St. Regis (0.03 mbps), Four Seasons Hotel (0.50 mbps) and Trump International (5.5 mbps), among others. And while they’re busy asking for $995, $994 and $1,675 a night respectively with paid Wi-Fi, it’s the $90 a night Da Vinci-s and the $155 a night Pod 39-s that are offering 100 mbps and 75.4 mbps for nothing.

In case you’re wondering, room rates and reviews are courtesy of Hotels.com. And while most hotels have their Wi-Fi listed as “free”, some still charge for access, or for access to a faster “premium” connection. Good thing is results can also be shared on social media. And hundreds of hotels have already been rated, besides New York, in London (51), San Francisco (42), Singapore (35) and Amsterdam (21) as well. To conclude, we can’t say just how thankful we are for this Tripadvisor of Hotel Internet.